Hetalia: World Series Episode #40

Turtles and convenience stores, two things that really ought not to go together.

What They Say:Lithuania's neighbors won't stop picking on him and the situation's got the little guy pretty stressed. Later, America longs for the convenience of all-night convenience stores. Also in this episode: Turtles, turtles, and more turtles.

The Review:Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)After a bit of an extended break, Hetalia's World Series season returns this week with a new episode, bringing us up to forty now. Kicking things off with the very polite but meek Lithuania is quite a bit of fun since he shows off his area proudly only to get himself beat up rather easily. Since he has a lot of neighbors that beat up on him, he's getting rather stressed and is trying to come up with ways to deal with it, which we see by him getting lots and lots of arrows together. The teaching about who the enemies to watch out for is adorable since it only heightens the way Lithuania is getting stressed since it just reinforces that there's a lot of people out there that are ready to get him.

There are a couple of other segments in here that run quickly, including a very cute piece about the differences in convenience stores between Japan and America. Having had a number of friends who have spent large amounts of time in Japan, there's whole lot to be said about these differences and the way that it just seems like they have seemingly everything. America's sadness over it is very, very cute as he's practically crying into his bento box that Japan has brought for him. The strange short that's included, with countries that I couldn't identify easily, simply revolves around a copious amount of small turtles that start climbing all over them. Similar to Catalia and other animal segments, it doesn't matter who all is involved. It's simply cute.

In Summary:The return of Hetalia hafter a break is quite welcome and the episodes focus on Lithuania and the troubles he definitely hits the right spots. Watching him getting beaten up but still wanting to learn how to defend himself rather than to just take it or submit says a lot about his character, but it looks like he's about to be taken advantage of again. The mini segments are pretty good too as it's about convenience stores and turtles, two subjects that are always worth spending time on. While I do long for the return of the Axis Powers material, I'm still enjoying World Series, just not as much.